Intel to buy driverless-car tech firm Mobileye for $15.3B

By

Allen Cone

Mobileye, which is headquartered in Jerusalem, announced Monday it will be acquired by U.S.-based Intel for $15.3 billion. Mobileye, founded in 1999, specializes in driver assistance systems and technology for self-driving cars. Photo by Atef Safadi/EPA

March 13 (UPI) -- Intel on Monday announced plans to increase its role in the self-driving car market, acquiring Israel-based Mobileye for $15.4 billion.

Mobileye, founded in 1999 and based in Jerusalem, specializes in creating chips and software for autonomous vehicles, including data analysis and mapping.

Intel plans to acquire Mobileye for $63.54 per share in cash, which is a 34 percent premium to Mobileye's closing price on Friday. The shares surged 30 percent to $61.22 on Nasdaq. Intel shares were down 2.3 percent to $35.14 on Nasdaq.

Intel, based in Santa Clara, Calif., is the world's largest semiconductor chip maker based on revenue of $59.4 billion in 2016, according to its annual financial report.

"Mobileye brings the industry's best automotive-grade computer vision and strong momentum with automakers and suppliers," Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said in a statement. "Together, we can accelerate the future of autonomous driving with improved performance in a cloud-to-car solution at a lower cost for automakers."

Intel estimates the vehicle systems, data and services market opportunity will reach $70 billion by 2030. And it predicts that by 2020, autonomous vehicles will generate 4,000 GB of data per day.

Intel's auto-driving group will be headquartered in Israel and led by Amnon Shashua, Mobileye's co-founder, chairman and chief technology officer. He is a computer science professor at Hebrew University in Jersusalem.

"By pooling together our infrastructure and resources, we can enhance and accelerate our combined know-how in the areas of mapping, virtual driving, simulators, development tool chains, hardware, data centers and high-performance computing platforms," said Ziv Aviram, Mobileye co-founder, president and CEO, in a statement. "Together, we will provide an attractive value proposition for the automotive industry."